Chapter 17

...

[Floor 2 – Day 17]

[Total Days in Trial: 58]

With that Miracle obtained, I had tipped the scales back in my favor. It was not by much, but the impact of my new ability was already becoming visible. No longer was I slowly circling the drain, waiting to die. No longer was I barely surviving. Instead, I was clawing my way back to something close to normal.

When I woke each morning, I would hunt. If I was lucky and my aim was true, I would secure an animal. Then, with a grim face, I would do my best to gut and clean it, and I would return with the meat.

Breakfast.

Oh, food. Wonderful food. You can only ignore hunger for so long, until it sinks into every part of who you are. Starvation changes the way you think, and you can only go so long without eating regularly, until you start to feel like some strange and detatched existence. No longer able to partake in the normal, mortal, life. I had felt as if I had been lingering, almost like a ghost. That I had not been truly alive, but not quite dead, either.

No more.

If luck was on my side, I would return with my roughly cleaned kill, back to the small church. There, I would cook. Using both the fat and the meat from whatever poor animal I had managed to hit with an arrow, I would set myself to tending a small fire, and frying up a heavy meal with whatever vegetables the Priest could spare me. In this, I would throw in things I found in the garden. I would add some oil from the Priest's storage room, and I would always add in a hard biscuit for some additional calories.

Each time, I would eat everything, with little to no restraint, and right before I did: I would cast the Miracle "Lesser Heal" on myself.

It was life-changing.

I did my best to hold the powers at work in place. Instead of one powerful burst of healing, like the Priest was capable of, I instead focused on maintaining a small, patient, trickle. A healing Miracle that did not possess great power, but instead persisted. Lingered for as long as I could manage to keep it, while I digested. Sitting in deep meditation, trying to cycle through the fading traces of the Miracle for as many heartbeats as I could, I worked at my control.

With this, I felt as though I was finally coming back to life.

The concept of magic was still abstract, and it clearly wasn't medicine. Using a Miracle was nowhere near the same as treating myself with insulin, and I could only imagine what concerns a doctor might have once they got past their initial questions. My potassium levels, and my ketones, for example: I still wasn't entirely sure how my body was handling those and I had no good way to check. I could only assume that the Miracle was helping in regard to these things as well, as it seemed to try its best to return my body to a healthy state.

But, questions on the specifics aside: I was still alive. The magic was enough. More than that, I knew that mastering the use of this Miracle was going to be absolutely necessary if I was going to continue surviving. My future depended on it.

[Status]

Name: John

Attributes

Class: Disciple – Skills: 4/7

Titles:

Perks:

Strength:

15

-

Lesser Analysis

Dexterity:

13

Archery 8

Constitution:

18

Resist Poison 12

Intelligence:

10

-

Wisdom:

12 [+2]

Meditation 4

Lesser Heal 2 - (Miracle)

Wise man of the Mountains

Charisma:

10 [+5]

-

Ambitious [ACTIVE]

I had been chipping away at Attributes I hadn't been able to focus on much during my stay on the first Floor, and it was a relief to see progress returning. Each one of those Attribute Points could make a huge difference, and I had felt myself slipping behind compared to my steady progress prior to arriving on the second Floor.

With four "Skills" now, I could also see how the Class I had was going to be very important moving forward. If I wanted to learn additional Miracles, it was going to cost me the chance as a Skill somewhere else, as everything I'd learned from the Priest had been settled in under the Wisdom Attribute. Unless I managed to find a way to improve the number of Skills I could have, learning more might cost me a potential Skill linked with one of my other Attributes. If I was going to have to specialize and give up on one (or more than one) of those Attributes, I should try to decide ahead of time and plan things out.

This subject was something I pondered, while going about my daily routine.

Apart from my sudden progress in earning the Miracle, though, not too much else was different in what I actually did every day. The days were still spent mostly in silence. I would hunt in the morning, of course, and I would try to eat something shortly after as long as I had the Miracle ready. But the rest of the daily routine was entirely unchanged.

My afternoon hours were still a time of meditation in the garden, with a few quiet instructions to help me along from the Priest. Then, after the sun began to sink over the mountains, the Priest would heal me at dinner, and perhaps offer a few more words. His ability to heal me with a Miracle still greatly out-performed my own, so even with my progress it was still only through his assistance that I was able to begin to recover. Yet, I felt assured that now I was finally able add to this, instead of relying entirely on him. By pushing myself to call upon the Miracle I'd gained as often as possible, using it each morning that I could muster it, I could see the path towards returning to something close to normal.

Still, it was hard work. There didn't appear to be any shortcuts, or tricks to it. The Miracle was cast as often as I could manage, which at the start was only once every two days. Each time I used it, I learned something from it. One more thing I hadn't noticed prior, would come to light. I recognized a bit more about how it worked, and what it did, and from these small pieces, I felt I could improve so the next time I attempted the Miracle, I could do so more effectively. Soon enough, I had it down to one every day and a half, and I was certain that I would continue making progress to improve further.

My motivation couldn’t have been stronger. It was life or death for me, and I was far too stubborn to die after everything I'd already been through. This was exactly what I needed to turn things around, and I could see the changes were finally in my favor as my weight loss finally stopped (or at least slowed to the point it wasn’t as noticeable) and I felt my energy returning. Not entirely, of course, not at first- but I could walk farther, and I could hunt a little longer. My meditation in the garden no longer felt so difficult, as my mind could focus again, and my thoughts felt much clearer.

As the days passed, I continued to push myself to the limit. Remembering what it was like to increase my Strength Attribute, I didn't let up. Keeping my breathing steady, soaking in every single heartbeat, I found progress was reachable. I felt that I was finally on the right track.

[SECONDARY QUEST]

[DEFEND THE CITIES: PROGRESS 0/4] [QUEST FAILED]

[REWARD REDUCED] [NEW SECONDARY QUEST ISSUED] [DEFEND THE CITIES: PROGRESS 0/3]

Still, in the background, those worrisome messages continued.

It seemed that while I stayed here, learning in peace and quiet: One by one, the cities I had been expected to try and protect were falling.

The thoughts gnawed at me, circling around as I tried to focus on my meditation. Trying to break into whatever inner-peace I could find, as I tried to improve myself. The questions of the unknown:

How long did I have, until whatever was coming for those cities, reached us here?

I hadn't seen a sign of anyone else in all the time I'd spent at the small church, so I knew we were isolated. When I had asked the priest how close the nearest city was, though, he'd informed me that they were all several days march away. So, I had indeed taken the wrong direction when I'd found the road, and the closest city was still about a week on foot if the trip was done by walking at a steady pace.

Which, I interpreted to be a good thing, in context of the sense of approaching doom. The problems were still far away, and that meant I had more time to try and find a way to survive. I had more time to prepare myself for what was coming.

... at the cost of entire cities of people being wiped out.

It made me feel cowardly.

With my newfound health and energy, sickly as I still probably seemed, I took to practicing with my bow for at least an hour a day. I had gotten decent at taking down small game in the mornings, but mostly I just practiced aiming and firing. Over, and over, and over. With a thick roll of hay and leftover cloth gifted to me by the Priest: I plugged a target with arrows until my arm and fingers felt like they might fall off.

I didn’t know the geography of the area. The Priest had no maps or books in the church that I could find, so quietly researching the subject wasn't possible either. All I really knew was that two cities had fallen, and there were three left. Combining that with what the Priest had shared with me: I knew there were only the Mountains beside us, which were utterly impassable, and down the road in the opposite direction was the nearest human city.

So, there was no telling when a Demon might finally show up. I really didn’t know how much longer we would remain safe, and was mostly hoping there would be some kind of warning before it happened. All I really knew for a fact was that no supplies had been delivered since I arrived. Which was probably not a great sign, considering the Priest had expected them eventually.

It’s possible my behavior began to change after I learned the second city had already fallen. Perhaps, this combined with the lack of incoming supplies, alerted the Priest in some way- for the old man was incredibly perceptive. As the afternoons of meditation continued, I noticed that he seemed far more serious in his efforts. His body collected a slowly pulsing glow, as he inhaled and exhaled with such slowness, he barely seemed to be breathing at all. As I meditated and focused on their Mana, I realized that he almost seemed to be reaching for something. Even with my extremely limited ability to sense Mana, I could feel the power that flowed from him.

With great patience, as if a vine slowly coiling itself up a tree, it ascended past the limits of his body. His wizened and aging flesh seemed to contain a tremendous force, that expanded every so slightly with every beat of his heart. The power of a lifetime, stored and waiting, being put to use.

The words he had been willing to share with me during this time, stopped, as he returned to silence. His focus seemed unbreakable, and he rose only to eat dinner and heal me, before returning to his silent meditation. I soon found myself working the garden alone, and realized that he was no longer sleeping, either. Instead he remained where he was seated long after the sun had set. While I felt tempted to try and interrupt him, to ask questions or seek guidance, Charisma's quiet urgings strongly hinted I should not.

So I waited.

Finally, after several days of this silence, he spoke again.

“You are ready.” He said, rising to his feet with an effortless grace that was not fitting for a man of his great age. “I know this will be difficult for you, but I must return to the city.”